Hi everyone! While I drag my feet on actually updating this goddamn blog, here’s some Prince-related writing of mine from elsewhere on the Internet: a piece I wrote for the online magazine published by record-of-the-month club Vinyl Me, Please. Thanks very much to VMP for making this happen!

4 thoughts on “Vinyl Me, Please: The 10 Best Prince Protégé Albums to Own on Vinyl”

Always a contentious thing to list top X in the Prince canon. I do wonder though, why include records that have 1 song and precious little else (I’d call them related, but not protege records) like Mazarati and Andre Cymone, but don’t include bona fide (and in my opinion, better) Prince protege albums like Time Waits For No One by Mavis Staples, NPG’s marvelous Exodus or even the more recent, but equally good Back In Time by Judith Hill? The last could have been a good alternative to the regular Prince album you included.

Yes, this was trickier than I anticipated, mostly because of the vinyl thing–what I discovered after pitching the article is that quite a lot of Prince’s post-’80s collaborations were CD- or even digital-only! As for why I didn’t include Mavis, I just couldn’t bring myself to lump her in as a protege–but I like hearing alternatives, so thanks for sharing!

Only with Judith Hill’s album I am not sure of the availability of a vinyl version, for the others I’ve owned them myself. I understand the reluctance to call Mavis a protege, although the album(s) she made with Prince do have his hands all over them. Still, it’s always tricky and there are no two Prince fans with similar tastes.. I’d probably have included the first Time album, the third Sheila E and Apollonia 6, instead of your choices, but I’m not sure that would make the list better, necessarily.